History in High School Is Long-Forgotten
The 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) U.S. history results were released earlier this week.
The nation’s 8th graders posted gains in U.S. history achievement compared with results from four years ago. Advances by black and Hispanic students, as well as by male students in the 8th grade, largely contributed to the increase. But at the 4th and 12th grade levels, there were no statistically significant changes in performance since 2001. Only 12 percent of 12th graders scored at proficient or advanced levels.
The general lack of advancement in U.S. students’ history knowledge comes at a time when the Teaching American History (TAH) program—the largest single source of federal funding for history education—was cut by $73 million (or 61 percent) in the FY11 budget. Additionally, the Obama administration’s FY12 budget request and ESEA blueprint propose to consolidate the grant programs supporting history, civics, and geography along with other important subjects into a single, competitive grant—the Effective Teaching and